Surveillance, Safety & Digital Control
Protecting communities from harmful surveillance and digital control.
Marginalised communities are often over-surveilled, under-protected, and data-rich but rights-poor. Across borders, public services, policing systems, welfare programmes, workplaces, and online platforms, AI is increasingly being used to monitor, profile, predict, and control behaviour. This pillar seeks to expose these practices and strengthen community resilience.
The AI Harm Watch Platform
Flagship Community Observatory
The AI Harm Watch Platform will serve as a community-driven observatory systematically documenting examples of AI-related harm, surveillance, discrimination, exclusion, and rights violations.
The platform will generate robust evidence for advocacy, support secure community reporting, and help activists precisely identify emerging risks across Africa.
Investigating Surveillance Harms
Mapping & Examining Risk
Mapping Digital Surveillance Harms
WATA will carefully document how surveillance technologies affect different communities, explicitly identifying patterns of monitoring, profiling, exclusion, criminalisation, and control.
The goal is to accurately map the landscape to better understand exactly who is being surveilled, by whom, for what purpose, and with what consequences.
Community Defense & Resilience
Safety Tools & Literacy
Community Surveillance Literacy Toolkit
Many people interact with surveillance technologies every single day without even recognising them.
Building on WATA’s foundational training resource, this toolkit will fundamentally help communities easily understand how surveillance operates, where it exists, what exact rights are at stake, and how individuals and organisations can respond effectively when harms occur.
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